A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Google Tangoes with Lenovo to Bring 3D Mapping to Smartphones (Wall Street Journal)
Google has already mapped the world in two dimensions. Now it wants to add the third, and it has enlisted China’s Lenovo to help. The companies announced plans for Lenovo to build and sell the first smartphone that can carry out the goals of Google’s Project Tango, which aims to allow smartphone users to understand their locations indoors.

How Apple Could Play Spoiler for the Search Ad Business (Search Engine Land)
Mark Ballard: Thinking about what developments could have the greatest impact on paid search in 2016, a few possibilities jump to mind, including whether or not Apple will make a move that shakes up the entire search industry. With so much volume flowing through their devices, there are a number of ways they could do this.

50% of Consumers in Mature Markets To Use Phones, Smartwatches for Mobile Payments by 2018 (BizReport)
The acceptance of mobile payments in countries like Japan, North America, and parts of Western Europe will lead to 50 percent of consumers in such markets using a wearable or mobile device to make payments by 2018. But rather than mobile wallets that are tied to a device, cloud-based solutions are predicted have a better rate of adoption, as they are able to “reach a wider audience and can support many use cases beyond face-to-face or in-store options”.

Companies with Culture Data Outperform Those Without It (Street Fight)
April Nowicki: To figure out how to identify the right interactions to promote, CultureIQ measures 10 different operational and strategic company qualities. Three are most important: support, work environment, and mission and value alignment.

Slash’s Mobile Keyboard Makes It an Interesting Player in the Messaging Wars (Fast Company)
A small New York-based company called Slash is building lots of search and content sharing functionality into a third-party keyboard that works pretty much anywhere on the phone. “Your mobile keyboard is the only layer that sits perfectly between the OS and every app,” said founder Cem Kozinoglu. “Every day, we use our keyboard multiple times to express our intentions; it’s simply the best place to build a search engine.”

Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes To an End After Being Acquired for $250M (TechCrunch)
The acquisition of Gilt Groupe by Hudson’s Bay is a tough end to the company’s story. The startup was one of the original flash-sale sites, but that whole market has found itself challenged by slim operating margins, waning popularity, and the difficulties of building a large-scale ecommerce operation.

Schibsted Wants To Circumvent the Mobile Ad-Blocking Apocalypse By Making Better, More Effective Ads (NiemanLab)
“Mobile advertising hasn’t gotten too much of a budget yet in terms of the creative side,” said Staffan Engström, head of mobile at the Scandinavian publishing group Schibsted. “It’s a big bottleneck to crack the code for successful mobile advertising. As soon as we see bigger budgets coming through, I think the effective results that we so far haven’t seen, what’s been holding the industry back — all will change.”

Going to the Movies Could Be a Fully Interactive Experience by 2020 (Adweek)
John Partilla, CEO of the cinema-advertising company Screenvision, says connected technology will radically change the movie-going experience as audiences’ small screens interact with large film screens and digitally enabled theaters. According to Partilla, in a cinema 2.0 world, marketers will have interesting opportunities to connect with theater-goers before, during, and after show time.

When Do Digital Buyers Research Products? (eMarketer)
More digital buyers are researching products on the day of purchase than before or after it, according to 2015 data, though research activity begins to heat up a month before purchase and continues for about a month after. For many shoppers, mobile is an essential tool.